Yep. But its entered into our national awareness is that we were being taxed unfairly.
What has happened in Europe is that the socialists have evolved into social democrats, even those parties that still have the “socialist” name – they no longer think of socialism as something that is to come after capitalism, they just want to tame the beast, not kill it, to maintain a strong welfare state, hold down unemployment, defend workers’ rights, etc.
And Sanders is the same. He might have been a Trotskyite or something in his youth, but he has been a consistent social democrat for decades now and nothing in his campaign rhetoric suggests he has reverted. He only sounds like a revolutionary because America has gone so far to the right that even social democracy now sounds revolutionary. I doubt there’s much in his domestic agenda with which FDR or LBJ would have had a serious problem.
Better no, but being the primary motivator for a decade’s long high growth period, yes. I mean look at the Great Depression, Roosevelt tried for like 8 years some of the most stimulative things we’ve ever done. While there’s been debate among economists for ever since about what the effects were, I’d say the broad consensus was it “alleviated the worst effects of the depression, and helped stabilize the economy, but did not end it or bring us back to growth.”
The problem with free markets is there are too many inputs, too many “decision points” and too many variables for a democratic government to be able to adjust, respond, and effect them all. With our imperfect knowledge of how the free economy works, government is thus limited in their powers in this regard.
The problem with a command economy is it ultimately becomes too difficult to run, and long run results are far worse than free economies.
Why would you think I could?
He sounds like a revolutionary because he says he’s a revolutionary.
Issue for issue, it is hard to say. One thought I had was that CCNY was free when FDR was governor of New York, but, after googling, I’m not sure that’s true.
However, I don’t think that issue-for-issue makes sense. Maybe there’s evidence how those men felt about treatment of homosexuals, but have you checked that? Whatever their views, after living in our world for couple months, they might, or might not, change. As for health care, it is a much bigger part of the national economy than in their times. This would cause a re-think of something like Medicare for all, if they did indeed favor it in their lifetimes.
FDR tried hard to be financially responsible. If he, or LBJ, came back and read this, and accepted it as true, he wouldn’t be likely to embrace the Sanders health care plan:
I can’t remember what LBJ said about Wall Street. FDR made statements against it, but consciously limited his vituperation. Sounds more likely like Hillary to me. If FDR read the Sanders web site, I suspect he would see a more polite version of Huey Long. That’s wouldn’t be a compliment to Bernie.
And FDR helped create what was to become the military industrial complex. The war was won with FDR allowing capitalists/“Big Business” to make significant profits off the effort. This was over the objection of some in his circle.
It does seem that BG has some nostalgia … on the Clinton supporter side, nah.
Not a Hillary Clinton supporter, though I am a Democrat and would not lose a wink of sleep is she is elected.
I see good reasons objectively in this thread in regards to why they support Hillary. Most have to do with domestic politics.
My take on why Hillary would be superior has to do with foreign policy. I agree with her with regards to Libya, that the country was doing well after Muammar Gaddafi was ousted and killed. I think the administration made a mistake by not lifting the arms embargo in the United Nations, hence the nascent Libyan government could not build up it’s military and police forces. The only ones with guns were the various militias, so as time went by the government became weaker and the militias called the shots. Libya crumbled into chaos and instability. Big mistake by the administration, but I blame this on Barack Obama, NOT Hillary Clinton. But like President Obama maintained recently and Clinton has defended during past debates, supporting Libyans in getting ridding of Gaddafi and his vile sons and entire regime was the right thing to do.
While I think Bernie Sanders’ ideas and platform are better domestically, foreign policy wise I trust Hillary Clinton the most. Sure some will say she is a woman and won’t be tough and will waver in times of crisis. But my hunch is that she will be best suited to handle a situation like say Russian president Vladimir Putin were to do something reckless such as further annexing or invading Ukraine or any other nation he deems Russia can invade. For the past few years the West has been laying back, not helping rebels take down Assad in Syria, not helping arm the Ukrainian government, etc. Couple this with the no vote against further European Union-Ukraine trade and integrations steps in the Netherlands and possible UK exit from the EU, and it’s not surprising that someone like Putin will smell opportunity. In the Dutch vote, people were supposed to vote whether the EU and Ukraine should upgrade ties or not, however the no vote won simply because right wing wackos like Geert Wilders focused on painting a narrative of how the EU is corrupt and sucks. Ukraine-the main issue of the vote- was totally forgotten. This played well into Russia’s hand, and Ukraine was held hostage to Dutch stupidity.
Hillary will be much tougher on the likes of Russia, Iran, Syria or any bad actor than Bernie Sanders. Sanders would most likely be a domestic policy president, which is great. But I feel he will be far likely to be hands off in times of world trouble, worse than Barack Obama. Hillary will be tougher and quicker to act than the current president, ditto a President Sanders.
Call me crazy but I think Hillary Clinton will be TOUGHER than a President Donald Trump. Yes many think he will blow half the world off with nuclear weapons, but I predict that Trump will be even more HANDS OFF than Hillary in terms of foreign policy. Trump makes stupid comments such as NATO is dead, he’ll even tell EU members to leave the EU and make Putin even more happier. He is the type who will negotiate with Putin and allow him to take Ukraine or some other unfortunate country and go to Moscow and make buddies with him.
Putin prefers Donald Trump than Hillary Clinton, make no mistake. Trump will most likely not take military action, any conflict he causes with other nations would be trade wars and financial pressure, say on China, Mexico, Iran, etc.
So yes my point is I trust Hillary Clinton to be more tough than Obama, and heck a lot more than Sanders and even the blowhard Donald Trump. On the GOP side Ted Cruz will be the more likely to take military action. To send a message to Putin that he is playing with fire, that NATO and the EU and the West are not disintegrating.
Now my post should not be taken out of context and misconstrued , I am not for war and I hope no military action is taken. However I do believe being too laid back like we have been gives enemies the false belief that that have carte blanche to do as they please.
I can go on to say why Bernie Sanders is superior in my view on other issues, but that is not the point of this thread.
This wouldn’t be up to him. It would be up to the rest of the world.
Suppose there’s an attack on US military forces, or a genocide. What’s he going to do? Tell his staff that he doesn’t want to talk about it?
One day early in his administration, something will happen, and his aides will tell him that Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping is testing him. Maybe, just maybe, that first time, Bernie will cleverly direct that aide to fail the test. Then Sanders drops in the polls, and, next time, he’ll make the same bad foreign policy decisions another Democrat would likely make.
Because Hillary has already made some of those bad decisions, I think she’ll do just a bit better at foreign policy – at least for the first couple years while Bernie would be learning.
Another small foreign policy plus for Hillary is that, coming into the presidency, people think she is a stronger figure than Bernie. So when she says that we need to take a breath rather than taking military action, she’ll have some credibility. Since Bernie would, by contrast, look weak coming in, he’d have more to prove, and face more pressure to show he’s not some kind of pacifist.
interesting how nearly every thing you mentioned in your list all happened from 2001-2009 (the W. years). Country was doing great before then.
Why not? Huey Long was truly a great man and if anything, Bernie Sanders needs to be more like him by being willing to fight in the gutter against the reactionary forces in American life. Unfortunately the only stylistic successor to the Louisianan in this election cycle is a Republican.
And they generally are fair-weather friends of the Democratic Party who basically see the party as the “safe and reliable guy” to date but will run off for the football player-excuse me “moderate Republican” the moment he announces he concedes the sibboleths of legalized abortion, gay marriage, and gun control. They are the new reactionary faction of the party now that the Dixiecrats are gone and are determined to make the party a whore to cosmpolitan Capital although fortunately the worst examples of them such as the nanny-stater Lieberman who decried violence in video games even as he smacked his lips over bombing Iran are gone or at least marginalized. Incidentally this is why I believe the Democratic Party can appeal to “moderate” or “conservative” Democrats even while becoming more strongly progressive by focusing on “bread and butter” socioeconomic issues while dropping or at least allowing for a broad spectrum of opinion on certain wedge issues like guns and abortion. A lot of it is also a matter of style-the war against Wall Street and plutocracy needs to be waged in nationalistic terms and more work must be done in Othering the oligarchs.
Nah, that stuff is always so shouty and jealous, and it doesn’t work even if you could convince people.
We don’t vilify the players who dominate everyone with their perfect archer rush or camping strategy, after figuring out that the game design is broken. We patch the game and fix the imbalance, being careful no to completely nerf the overpowered strategy or create another overpowering unit or weapon. That’s how rent seeking should be handled. Minimized by well designed financial controls, with accumulated rewards from past exploits steadily eroded through demurrage.
Some of Martin’s post is not completely wrong, but I want to highlight two misconceptions that have been foisted on honest Republicans by dishonest propaganda.
The 1993 Budget, passed without a single Republican vote is widely credited by objective economists of ushering in one of the greatest eras of prosperity. It was unfortunate that voters could not think beyond “Taxxes: dem’s teh Bad” and replaced the Democratic Congress with Gingrich’s Congress.
I’m not sure what exactly Martin means in the second sentence I quoted. I hope he’s not just referring to the Community Reinvestment Act — the myth that it was a major cause of the crisis has been discredited everywhere except in the right-wing blogosphere. It is true that government regulators were partly to blame — but it wasn’t over-regulation that was the problem; it was under-regulation and the subornation of regulators by the very institutions they’re charged with regulating.
Sure. If you emulate as corrupt, vindictive, and unscrupulous a person as there ever was, Huey’s your man.
It shouldn’t, because you’re not voting for Bill Clinton, you’re voting for Hillary Clinton. Being married doesn’t make them a hive mind.
Hillary Clinton isn’t the kind of candidate who appeals to people who vote for reasons like nostalgia. She appeals to your brain not your heart.
Neat. Well this discussion was pretty good for the first few dozen replies, then it turned into people denigrating the other side.
I hope the democratic party can heal up this rift in time for the general election. I’m guessing it can, people were worried in 2008 about the same thing but there was no real rift.
There is no rift. There’s entrenched progressives (i.e. the extreme left) and idealist youth, most of whom will moderate as they age and the remnant that will stay in that fringe. Where are they going to go? The Tea Party is still effectively part of the GOP for the simple reason that their only chance for real power lies in swaying their more moderate party-mates.
The Democratic Party is just fine. Now, the GOP, on the other hand…
Really, the people I know have been involved in running the DFL in Minnesota for 30 years. They get paid for it and everything.
Progressives are considered center left in most european nations. I don’t see what makes them extreme left.
Again, you along with other posters are implying that all these young people are dumb and will grow up and become conservative. Not only did I post an article earlier showing that that isn’t true, but the reasons young people are progressive is because they are seeing the worst effects of movement conservatism while they are becoming politically aware. That bias will probably stay with them for life. Growing up and having to support a family in this society and this economy is if anything going to push people further to the left on economic issues.
Where are they going to go? Hopefully not to the green party like they did in 2000. Hopefully they won’t sit out and stay home like they did in 2010.
Again, the extreme left (as you like to call them) make up about 1/5 of the electorate according to pew. They are also among the most educated, most activist, most likely to donate money, most informed, etc. group in the electorate, if not the most.